On 2005-11-08, "Intelligent Design" proponent William Dembski
proposed what he calls (tongue, presumably, in cheek) a "Vise Strategy"
as a successor to the "Wedge", the aim being to "squeeze the truth
out of Darwinists". You can read the whole thing at
www.designinference.com
(pdf, 23 pages).

Dembski suggests that "Darwinists" (a term used incessantly
by anti-evolutionists, and scarcely ever by their opponents)
can, and should,be shown up as "bigoted extremists",
"condescending elitists" or "closet ID theorists", by
asking them a series of questions intended to reveal
their hidden agendas and presuppositions. Well, I happen
to be what Dembski calls a "Darwinist" and I'm not aware
of being any of those terrible things, so let's try the
obvious experiment: the following are my answers to all
of Dembski's questions. We'll see whether I end up in a
morass of contradictions, or showing my embarrassing true
colours, or what.

I don't propose to offer much in the way of support for
my answers, except where the questions actually ask for it.
Dembski contends that just by answering the questions I should
find myself in "a steel trap that leave[s] the Darwinists
no room to escape". So, after answering the questions,
I'll look back and see whether that's happened, and make
some other remarks on the questions and on the comments
that Dembski scatters among them.

For the sake of realism, I'm answering these questions
in order, without looking ahead for traps or anything. I'm
taking them in the same order as Dembski gives them in,
and not skipping any unless they're obviously completely
inapplicable. Dembski's questions are in italics;
my answers are in roman except for occasional bits of emphasis.
All headings are mine.

Is it fair to say that you regard intelligent design
as not a part of science? Would you agree that proponents
of intelligent design who characterize it as a "scientific
discipline" or as a "scientific theory" are mistaken?
Yes. It isn't altogether impossible a priori that something
along the lines of "intelligent design theory" might some day
be part of science, but for now there is no scientific theory,
and no scientific discipline, of "intelligent design".

One aside that seems worth making: the term "intelligent
design" is ambiguous in various ways; it can mean what the
ID folks say has happened, or the belief that it's happened,
or the belief that there's compelling scientific evidence
that it's happened, or a putative scientific theory showing
that it's happened, or a putative scientific theory exploring
its details. It would be a useful exercise to distinguish
clearly all the possible meanings of "intelligent design"
and disambiguate every use of that phrase, for the avoidance
of equivocation; but I'm not going to try to do it now.

Would you characterize intelligent design as a
"pseudoscience"? I don't think it's as pseudo as,
say, astrology. For some purposes it would be better
characterized as really, really bad science than as
outright pseudoscience. But, on the whole, yes.

Would it be fair to say that, in your view, what makes
intelligent design a pseudoscience is that it is religion
masquerading as science? If ID is something other than
science, what exactly is it? No, it wouldn't be quite
right to say that the reason why ID isn't science is that
it's "religion masquerading as science" -- although there's
some truth in that accusation. There are a number of reasons
why ID is not science. (As there ought to be, if it isn't.
"Science" is a fuzzily defined notion, whose boundaries are
loosely defined by several different criteria. For something
to be firmly outside the realm of science, it should typically
be found to miss on several of those criteria.) So: ID is not
science, because ...

Its alleged theoretical and evidential basis has been soundly refuted.
The theory of phlogiston was science once, but a "phlogiston
theorist" would generally be regarded as a pseudoscientist
or a crank now, because we've found that there is no phlogiston.
ID (disambiguation: in the sense "the idea that there's compelling
scientific evidence that some living things are the way they were
because some intelligent being designed them that way") fails a
similar test. The evidence alleged to show intelligent design
consists of Behe's "irreducible complexity" (which, depending
on how you define "irreducible complexity" and what you claim
follows from it, is either wrong because we have no good reason
to think anything in nature is "irreducibly complex" or wrong
because we have no good reason to think that "irreducible complexity"
is strong evidence against emergence by mutation and natural selection),
Dembski's "explanatory filter" (full of undefined and probably
undefinable terminology, based on appeal to an unproven and highly
implausible "law of conservation of information"), and maybe
Dembski's treatment of the "no free lunch" theorems (utterly
bogus because they simply don't apply to the situations Dembski
wants them to apply to). None of this stands up to careful
examination.

It has no presence in the scientific literature.
Well, near enough none. The ID people say this is because the
theory is very young, because there's a Darwinist conspiracy
to suppress it, because they have more effective ways of
operating than publication in the peer-reviewed literature;
and, indeed, any of those could in principle be true. But it
doesn't look much as if they are to me.

It is not refutable. A good scientific theory --
perhaps even a bad scientific theory, if it is to deserve the
name "scientific" -- needs to make testable predictions.
ID "theory" doesn't.

Its adherents seem to have decided the answer before
asking questions, on the basis of their religious convictions.
It's notable that just about everyone in the ID movement is a
conservative Christian, and many of the leaders of the movement
have made it clear (when speaking to their supporter base among
conservative Christians) that they are advocating ID because
they think Christianity is incompatible with evolutionary theory
as understood in the mainstream.

Its adherents aren't making any effort to do any science.
Well, near enough none. Dembski and Behe and Wells and co are
putting most of their effort into popular advocacy, not into
scientific research.

It repudiates a demonstrably effective methodological
rule, foundational to the present practice of science.
One of the reasons why science works is its refusal to stop
asking "how does that happen?" and demanding answers in terms
of things we can understand. Of course it may happen that
some things can't rightly be treated this way, but that's
better regarded as a limitation of the domain of science
than as an error in scientific practice. If it becomes
acceptable in "science" to say "Oh, I dunno, maybe God
did it" then one of the mainsprings of scientific enquiry,
namely the drive to understand and explain, will be unwound.

It is repudiated by the great majority of scientists
in the relevant fields. To some extent, "science is what
scientists do", and scientists on the whole don't seem to think
that ID is science.

Are you a scientist? Only in a weak sense: my professional
qualifications are in a somewhat scientific subject, and my work is in
a somewhat scientific field. (So I'm a "scientist" in the same sense
as William Dembski.)

Do you feel qualified to assess whether something is or is not
properly a part of science? What are your qualifications in this
regard? I feel qualified to have an opinion on the subject,
just as I feel qualified to have an opinion about whether there's
a God, whether taxation is a good thing, and so on. I don't claim
that my opinion is authoritative, or that anyone else should be
obliged to agree with it.

Do you think that simply by your being a scientist, you are
qualified to assess whether or not something is or is not properly
a part of science? In the only sense of "qualified" that I
claimed above, I think I'm so "qualified" quite apart from whether
I'm a scientist or not. I don't think this is very interesting.

Have you read any books on the history and philosophy of
science? Yes, a few, but not very recently.

Would you agree that in the history of science, ideas that
started out as "pseudoscientific" may eventually become properly
scientific, for example, the transformation of alchemy into
chemistry? As I understand it, the "transformation of
alchemy into chemistry" is an example not of ideas
changing from pseudoscience to science, but of a community
of practice making that change by changing their ideas.
I don't think many of the ideas of alchemy would be regarded
as scientific. But I do think such transformations can happen,
in principle. For instance, maybe Democritus's "atoms" were
pseudoscience in his time (though the term is a bit unfair,
as science-as-we-now-understand-it didn't exist yet) but
something a bit like them was science in Dalton's time.
(The modern conceptions nearest to Democritean atoms are
different enough from them that I don't think the ideas can
reasonably be considered the same.) This sort of transformation
generally happens, I think, by "coincidence": the original
practitioners aren't doing science and don't understand why
their ideas will eventually turn out to be right. Hence, in
such instances the initial label of "pseudoscience" is fair.

Is it possible that ID could fall into this category,
as the transformation into a rigorous science of something
that in the past was not regarded as properly scientific?
That would probably depend on how, and how broadly, "ID" is
defined. As I said right at the start, something along those
lines could conceivably happen. I'd guess that the resulting
scientific discipline would have to be very different from
what ID advocates are currently doing.

Are there precise criteria that tell you what belongs
to science and what doesn't? No; the boundaries of
science are fuzzy.

Then on what basis do you preclude ID from being science?
In that case, isn't your ruling out ID as belonging to science
purely a subjective judgement? How do you rule it out as not
being science if you have no criteria for judging what's in and
what's outside of science? The previous question was about
precise criteria, and suddenly this question assumes
that a "no" answer means that I have no criteria at all! Bah.
Compare the famous example of "games". There doesn't seem to be
a useful definition of "game" in terms of precise criteria;
rather, we have some fuzzy notions of what makes something a game,
and various prototypical examples and non-examples, and so on.
So, indeed, for some things it's a judgement call whether they
should be called "games" or not. But the answer to "Is the
manufacture and testing of nuclear warheads a game?" isn't
in any useful sense "purely subjective", because there are
so many ways in which that activity fails to be game-like.
Similarly (though to a lesser extent) there are so many ways
in which "intelligent design" fails to be science-like that
I'm comfortable saying outright that it isn't science. Let me
reiterate that I don't claim to be an authority on the subject;
but you asked my opinion, and I'm giving it.

Please list all the criteria you can think of that
demarcate science from non-science. Are you sure these are
all of them? If you are not sure these are all of them,
how can you be sure that your criteria are the right ones?
There are a great many. I've listed, or at least alluded to,
several of them above. Of course I'm not sure that my set
is complete. I strongly doubt that "all of them" really
has meaning; there will surely be many possible sets with
substantially the same consequences. Likewise for "the
right ones"; there are probably plenty of sets of criteria
that could be considered "the right ones".

Do these criteria work in all cases? Do they tell you
in every instance what's in and what's outside of science?
Are there no exceptions? Of course they don't give a
clear answer in every case, because some things simply
aren't either clearly in or clearly out. I'd put
string theory on the boundary, for instance. Maybe cold
fusion, too. Maybe "hydrino theory". Again, that doesn't
stop there being instances in which the answer is
clear. General relativity is clearly in. Astrology is
clearly out. I think ID is fairly clearly out, though
(as I said before) not as clearly out as astrology. One
especially fuzzy boundary is the one between non-science
and really bad science. I'm not entirely certain which
side ID is on.

Let's consider one very commonly accepted criterion
for what's in and what's outside of science, namely
testability. Would you say that testability is a
criterion for demarcating science? In other words,
if a claim isn't testable, then it's not scientific?
Would you agree with this? I'm not sure that I'd
agree at the level of individual claims. A claim needs
to be assessed in the context of a surrounding theory,
and one can always adjust the theory instead of the claim
if experimental consequences come out unfavourably.
Still, if a theory doesn't make testable predictions
then that's a heavy argument against its being "science";
and if proponents of a theory show themselves inclined
to revise anything and everything other than their theory
when unfavourable evidence comes in, that's a heavy
argument against the claim that they're doing "science".

Would you give as one of the reasons that ID is not science
that it is untestable? Yes, and indeed I already did give
that as one of the reasons. It may be better considered as a
reason why ID advocates aren't doing science than as a reason
why ID, in the abstract, isn't science.

Let's stay with testability for a bit. You've agreed
that if something is not testable, then it does not
properly belong to science. Is that right? Not quite;
my actual position is stated above.

Have you heard of the term "methodological materialism"
(also sometimes called "methodological naturalism")? Yes,
and I consider the latter -- much more usual -- term for it
a better one; some of the "natural" entities postulated by
science, such as wave functions, could with some plausibility
be called immaterial.

Do you regard methodological naturalism as a regulative
principle for science? In other words, do you believe
that science should be limited to offering only materialistic
explanations of natural phenomena? ... This is not
a trick question. By materialistic explanations I simply mean
explanations that appeal only to matter, energy, and their
interactions as governed by the laws of physics and chemistry.
Do you regard methodological naturalism in this sense as a
regulative principle for science? There are a few
ways in which I'm uncomfortable with the principle as stated,
though there's clearly something right about it. Firstly,
it seems to say that only the entities currently known to
physics are admissible in explanations. That's obviously
silly; new discoveries in physics, some of them involving
whole new kinds of stuff, happen every now and then. Secondly,
"should be limited to" is somewhat ambiguous. Thirdly, you
can do science (perhaps in a slightly attenuated sense of
the term) taking as foundation some set of concepts that
don't go all the way down to fundamental physics, as in
the "social sciences".

I do believe in a principle of methodological naturalism,
but I really don't like your statement of it. I think the key
idea is this: Explaining the behaviour of A in terms of
that of B is a scientific activity only in so far as the
behaviour of B is clearly specified. So you can offer
explanations in terms of electrons and call that science,
because we have a pretty detailed account of how electrons
are supposed to behave. If you want to offer explanations
in terms of, say, human reactions to incentives, then for
what you're doing to be science you need to say what those
reactions are supposed to be; that's what economists do,
sometimes.
Explanations in terms of God are only scientific to the
extent that you have an underlying theory of what God is
supposed to do. Which, on the whole, we don't, and we aren't
supposed to, what with God being ineffable and sovereign
and all that.

(As an answer to, approximately, one of the things I said above,
Dembski proposes that the questioner should say ...)

I see. You think there are higher-order phenomena
that cannot be accounted for in terms of any sort of
reductive materialism. Would you then admit that intelligence
is a higher-order process that's fundamental to nature and that
can be invoked in scientific explanations? Would you be
comfortable in claiming that intelligence constitutes a legitimate
category of explanation within the natural sciences? If so,
then how can you say that intelligent design is non-scientific?
If not, then how can you deny holding to methodological materialism?
You can use intelligence in scientific explanations if you've
got a specification of how intelligence behaves. So a psychologist
who explains some results in terms of differences in intelligence
could be offering a somewhat-scientific explanation. I don't regard
intelligence as a process that's "fundamental to nature", at least
not if I understand that phrase correctly. I don't deny holding
to methodological naturalism; see above.

Could you explain the scientific status of methodological
materialism? For instance, you stated that testability is a
criterion for true science. Is there any scientific experiment
that tests methodological materialism? Could you describe such
an experiment? Methodological naturalism is not a scientific
claim; indeed, it isn't a claim at all, but a technique. If there's
an underlying claim, it would be something like "Methodological
naturalism is an effective strategy"; we could test it, for
instance, by having some people do biology using methodological
naturalism and some people (let's call them "the Discovery Institute")
do biology without it, and see which group produces more and better
scientific research. Well, it turns out that this has been done
and methodological naturalism is doing pretty well.

Are there theoretical reasons from science for accepting
methodological materialism? For instance, we know on the basis
of the second law of thermodynamics that the search for perpetual
motion machines cannot succeed. Are there any theoretical reasons
for thinking that scientific inquiries that veer outside the
strictures of methodological materialism cannot succeed? Can you
think of any such reasons? No, of course there's no reason
why someone who rejects methodological naturalism can't
succeed; one can get good results using suboptimal procedures.
Kepler made some good astronomical discoveries despite having
strange ideas about the planets and nested Platonic solids.
There is empirical evidence that methodological naturalism
works well in practice; see above. There is a theoretical reason
for expecting this (though it's doubtless informed by hindsight):
without it, it's too easy to give up too early.

A compelling reason for holding to methodological materialism
would be if it could be demonstrated conclusively that all natural
phenomena invariably submit to materialistic explanations. Is
there any such demonstration? No, of course not.

(Conditional on the appeal -- as in my answers above -- to the
empirical success of methodological naturalism so far, Dembski
suggests asking ...)

But wouldn't you agree that there are many natural phenomena
for which we haven't a clue how they can be accounted for in terms
of materialistic explanation? Take the origin of life? Isn't the
origin of life a wide open problem for biology, one which gives
no indication of submitting to materialistic explanation?
It's certainly wide open, which is hardly surprising considering
how far in the past it is. "No indication of submitting to materialistic
explanation" is ambiguous. There are various candidate (but sketchy)
materialistic explanations; it certainly isn't obvious to me that
they're no good. So, sure, we don't know what happened, just as
we don't know what happened to Ambrose Bierce. That doesn't, in
itself, mean that there's any sort of crisis for naturalistic
accounts of the world, any more than our ignorance about Bierce
means we should think it likely that he was abducted by aliens.

Would you agree, then, that methodological naturalism is not
scientifically testable, that there is no way to confirm it
scientifically, and therefore that it is not a scientific
claim? As mentioned above, it's not a claim at all. The
claim "methodological naturalism is effective" is a claim, and
it's somewhat testable, by somewhat scientific means, and it
emerges quite well from that testing. Stronger claims like
"Everything we'll ever care about can be usefully explained
using no notions not found in fundamental physics" are harder
to test and may be false. The claim "Methodological naturalism
is characteristic of science" is a claim about science
rather than within it (though the sociology of science
is, to some extent, itself a science).

Is there any way to show scientifically that materialistic
explanations provide a true account for
all natural phenomena? Is it possible that
the best materialistic explanation of a natural phenomenon
is not the true explanation? If this is not possible, please
explain why not. Of course there isn't; and, of course
it is.

Since methodological materialism is not a scientific
claim, what is its force as a rule for science? Firstly,
that methodological naturalism has been found to be a very
effective technique. Secondly, that without it it's too easy
to give up and say "at this point, a miracle occurs".
Much of scientific technique is about getting in the way
of human laziness, bias, and bad thinking. The tendency
to give up looking for explanations when the going gets
heavy is one of the things scientific technique tries
to get in the way of.

But if methodological materialism's authority as a rule
for science derives from its success in guiding scientific
inquiry, wouldn't it be safe to say that it is merely a
working hypothesis for science? And as a
working hypothesis, aren't scientists free to discard it
when they find it "no longer works"? It's far from
clear to me what "works" means here. But of course it
might happen that something isn't explicable in scientific
terms, and it certainly often happens that we don't know
how to explain something in scientific terms. In such cases,
we can stop doing science and start doing something else,
and sometimes that gives what seem to be good results.
(We do this all the time in our interactions with one
another.) In general, what we then do isn't considered
"science"; it typically lacks some useful attributes we
associate with science: precision, testability, predictive
force. (These consequences are clearest when methodological
naturalism is understood in terms similar to the ones I
described above: An explanation conforms to MN in so far
as it eschews appeals to things we don't understand and
can't model.)

If methodological materialism is not a scientific
claim, how can it be unscientific for ID theorists to
discard it as a working hypothesis for science? In the
absence of methodological materialism as a regulative
principle for science, what else is there that might
prevent ID from being developed into a full-fledged
science? You claimed earlier that ID is not testable.
Is that the reason you think ID cannot be developed
into a full-fledged science? Methodological naturalism
is not a "claim" at all. It's "not scientific" in the
sense that it isn't a claim within science, not in the
sense that it doesn't describe what science is or what
science should be. So I don't see what the obstacle is
to declaring that those who drop it are being unscientific.
As discussed above, they might in some instances be
right; but "right" is not the same thing as
"scientific". Someone who says that Bach is a better
composer than Mozart, or that there is exactly one god,
may be right, but those aren't scientific statements
either.

I mentioned earlier some other things that argue
against regarding ID "theory" as science. Whether there's
any prospect of a genuinely scientific theory emerging
that we culd rightly regard as continuous with todays' ID,
I don't know -- though I don't see any sign of it happening.
Untestability certainly seems like a problem for ID;
Dembski's purported tests for design are rubbish.

But how can you say that ID is not testable?
Over and over again, Darwin in his Origin
of Species compared the ability of his
theory to explain biological data with the ability
of a design hypothesis to explain those same data.
Moreover, Darwin stressed in the Origin
that "a fair result can be obtained only by fully
stating and balancing the facts and arguments on
both sides of the question." How, then, can you
say that ID is not testable when Darwin clearly
claimed to be simultaneously testing a design
hypothesis against his own theory? As I
mentioned way back, the "testability" of a theory
is often as much a matter of the attitude of its
proponents as of the theory itself. ID, as practiced
by its actual proponents, is not testable because
they offer no way to test it; no experimental outcome
that would lead them to admit defeat. That doesn't
mean that it's impossible for any design hypothesis
to be testable, and perhaps Darwin considered some
testable ones. Since what's now called "ID theory"
wasn't around in Darwin's time, you can't claim that
it was ID that Darwin was proposing to test. (If you
insist on doing so, then you'd better also say that
ID is over a hundred years old. If it hasn't become
a "full-fledged science" yet after more than a century,
its prospects are looking pretty dim.)

Okay, you are still not convinced that ID is
testable. Consider the following possibility: Darwinian
biologists provide detailed testable scenarios for how
the bacterial flagellum and other irreducibly complex
molecular machines that Michael Behe has identified
could have been produced by, as Darwin put it, "numerous
successive slight modifications". In that case, wouldn't
you agree that ID would be tested and found wanting?
Some claims made by ID advocates in support of ID are
certainly testable. Concrete claims that such-and-such
a thing couldn't have evolved naturally are probably
testable. The existence of some testable fragments
within a body of claims doesn't make that body as a whole
testable. If Behe's concrete claims about irreducible
complexity were refuted, would you give up on ID? If not,
then their testability doesn't mean that (for you) ID itself
is testable.

Let's talk about creation and creationism a bit.
Is it fair to say that you think ID is a form of
creationism? On the whole I'd say no; ID has been
described as "creationism in a cheap tuxedo", but in fact
I'd say that ID is the cheap tuxedo in which
creationists have tried to disguise themselves and their
views.

Does ID try to harmonize its scientific claims,
like those about specified complexity and irreducible
complexity, with the Bible? If so, please indicate.
It's not clear what ID "does", not least because the term
"ID" is so ambiguous. ID advocates certainly
do that, but there's nothing particularly wrong with
that. (Some evolutionists also try to harmonize their
scientific claims with their religious beliefs and
unbeliefs. Nothing wrong with that, either.)

But there are a couple of things that go beyond
just "trying to harmonize" and that seem to me to give
more cause for concern. Firstly, some ID folks have
said that ID is basically theology in disguise, as
when Dembski said that "intelligent design is just
the Logos theology of John's gospel restated in the
idiom of information theory". Secondly, some ID folks
seem to put ID forward as the result of
impartial scientific investigation, when in fact
they started from the assumption that things are
the product of "intelligent design" (on the basis
of their religious views) and went searching
for reasons. The converse sometimes happens among
evolutionists -- Dawkins probably offers examples --
and it's a bad sign there, too; but what's worse
about ID is that this seems to be the history of
just about every ID proponent, whereas it
doesn't seem that every evolutionist begins from a
position of atheism or naturalism.

Is it fair to say that ID is not in the business
of matching up its scientific claims with the Genesis
record of creation or any other system of religious
belief? If otherwise, please indicate.
Again, it's not clear how to determine what "ID"
does, as distinct from what its proponents do. Some
of those proponent do try to match up their allegedly
scientific claims with their theology, but when they
do so they say they aren't doing ID theory. I'm willing
to answer "yes" to this one, at least for the purposes
of argument.

Is it fair to say that ID is not young earth
creationism, also known as scientific creationism
or creation science? It's not the same thing as
any of those (though "creation science" is also not
the same thing as "young earth creationism", so
there's something fishy here).

Is it possible to hold to ID and not be a
Christian, Jew or Muslim? Is it possible to be a
Buddhist and hold to ID? Is it possible to be a
Hindu and hold to ID? Of course. It's
probably even possible to be an atheist and hold
to ID, though I don't know of any examples.
In practice, though, proponents of ID almost
always seem to start off by rejecting the usual
scientific account of the history of life for
religious reasons, and then turn to ID for support.

Is it possible to hold to ID for philosophical reasons
that have nothing to do with any sort of conventional
belief in God? In other words, can one hold to ID and
not believe in God, much less a creator God? In
principle yes; in practice, it's very rare. See above.

Would you
agree that Aristotle, who held to an eternal universe
and an inherent purposiveness within nature (i.e., not
imposed on nature from the outside), did not have a
conventional belief in God but would today properly
be regarded as an ID advocate? No. Aristotle
argued for the existence of God as, for instance,
the "First Mover". He wrote, "We say therefore that
God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that
life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God;
for this is God" [Metaphysics, 1072b]. As to
whether he would rightly be called an ID proponent
today, I don't know. If it's true that he attributed
the nature of living things to an "inherent purposiveness"
without an intelligence behind it, then I'm not sure
why he should be called an intelligent design
theorist. If he thought there was an intelligence
behind it, then it's not clear to me that his beliefs
on this score are much different from those of typical
theists.

Are you familiar with
Antony Flew's recent embracing of intelligent design
despite his rejection of conventional belief in God
(for instance, he explicitly rejects personal immortality)?
Aware of, rather than familiar with. I'm also aware that
along with that change of view he also embraced deism,
and that he has said "I now realize that I have made a
fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable
theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the
first living creature capable of reproduction" -- that being
the issue on which he found ID arguments convincing. So
Flew isn't a great example either of a non-religious person
or an ID believer, let alone of a non-religious ID believer.

Let's now turn to someone like Kenneth Miller,
who has remarked "I'm an orthodox Catholic and an
orthodox Darwinian". Miller, as a Catholic believer,
holds to a doctrine of creation. Is Miller a creationist?
Not according to my definition. Possibly according to some
very loose definitions, like one adopted by William Dembski
when he wrote about "Mere Creation".

(The following question, Dembski observes, would need
some tailoring when addressed to anyone other than Miller
himself. I'll quote it as it stands and answer it as if
suitably tailored.)

Prof. Miller, as an orthodox Catholic, is it fair
to say that you subscribe to orthodox views of divine
action? In particular, do you believe that God has acted
miraculously in salvation history, parting the Red Sea,
performing miracles in the life of Jesus, notably his
miracles of healing, transforming water into wine, and
above all the Virgin Birth and Christ's Resurrection?
Were these miracles plain to see? For instance, when
Jesus changed the water into wine, was it evident that
a miracle had taken place? I expect Miller's answer
would resemble mine: yes, God has sometimes acted miraculously,
and some but not all of these miracles would have been plain
to see for those with their eyes open.

So you agree that God is able to act miraculously
and that God has indeed acted miraculously and discernibly
in salvation history. What then prevents God from acting
miraculously and discernibly in natural history?
Nothing. Obviously.

Okay, let me get this straight. Miller is an
orthodox Catholic. He holds to a creator God who
has acted miraculously in history. And yet he is
not a creationist. On the other hand, there are
ID proponents (like David Berlinski) who have no
religious belief and who, simply in virtue of
supporting ID, are, according to you, creationists.
Wouldn't it be fair to say that it is simply an
abuse of language to identify ID with creationism?
I don't myself identify ID with creationism; see above.
I wouldn't say it's "simply an abuse of language"
to do so, since making the identification points up
an important fact, namely that the great majority of
ID proponents are using ID to buttress creationism.
But yes, I consider it incorrect to identify the two.

Your main beef with ID seems to be that it claims
that material causation is an incomplete category for
scientific explanation. Is that true or is there any
other criticism that you think is more significant?
If it is true, how can you claim that ID is creationism?
Creationism suggests some positive account of an
intelligence creating the world. But your problem
with ID seems to be in its denial that a certain
category of causation can account for everything in
nature. I have several other disagreements with ID,
and reasons for considering it unscientific, besides
the one mentioned; see above. And I don't claim that
ID "is" creationism.

Are you merely a methodological materialist or are you
also a metaphysical/philosophical materialist? In other words,
do you pretend that everything happens by material causation
merely for the sake of science but then bracket that
assumption in other areas of your life? Or do you really
hold that everything happens by material causation --
period? If the latter, on what grounds do you hold to
metaphysical materialism? Can that position be scientifically
justified? How so? If you claim merely to be a methodological
materialist, then whence the confidence that material
causation is adequate for science? I am a methodological
naturalist only. I don't "pretend" that everything happens by
material causation, for the sake of science or otherwise.
I'm not even sure that "material causation" can be defined
in such a way as to be a useful term, but let's suppose it
can. I simply consider that non-naturalistic explanations
are not part of science, because (see above for what I mean
by "non-naturalistic" in this context) they are inevitably
not checkable empirically and short on useful predictions.

What is the nature of nature? Does nature operate
purely by material causation? If not, how could we know it?
I'm not sure what the scope of "nature" is here. I don't,
on the whole, think that everything happens by material
causation. There might be some mileage in restricting the
term "nature" to things that do (following the widespread
but fuzzy distinction between "natural" and "supernatural",
in which case the answer would be "yes, by definition".

Consider the following riddle (posed by Robert Pennock):
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
Wouldn't you agree that the answer is four: calling a tail
a leg doesn't make it one? Accordingly, wouldn't it be
prejudicial to define nature as a closed system of material
entities in which everything happens by material causation?
Wouldn't you agree that nature is what nature is, and it is
not the business of scientists to prescribe what nature is
like in advance of actually investigating nature?
I think the riddle actually goes back to Abraham Lincoln.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one, but there might
be contexts in which "leg-or-tail" was a useful concept.
Similarly, there might be contexts in which "whatever
happens by material causation" is a useful concept, and
"nature" might be the nearest thing we have to a good term
for it. But that's all speculation. I don't define
"nature" in any such terms; I do agree that the world is
whatever it is; and I agree that it's possible in principle
that we might find compelling evidence that some things
aren't susceptible to what we currently consider scientific
explanation.

However: that doesn't mean that we should redefine
"science". For one thing, such evidence as the ID movement
claims to have for things that aren't explicable in
what's-currently-considered-scientific terms is hopelessly
weak. For another, even if there were such evidence that
wouldn't make redefining science the right course of action.
Scientific enquiry gains many advantages from its refusal
to consider "unscientific" explanations (which, please note,
I do not consider to be the same as "explanations that use
notions other than the ones currently considered fundamental
by physicists"; see above), and giving that up might not be
worth it for the benefit it would bring. Every individual
scientist who has any unscientific beliefs and admits it
(that would be just about all of them) has made a similar
decision in his or her own life.

Consider the following statement: "To make methodological
materialism a defining feature of science commits the premodern
sin of forcing nature into a priori categories rather than
allowing nature to speak for itself." Do you consider this
statement right or wrong? If wrong, why? I consider it
wrong, because making methodological naturalism a defining
feature of science is placing restrictions on science,
not on nature.

Let's return to the issue of testability in science.
Do you agree that for a proposition to be scientific it must
be testable? Good. Not so fast. I'm not sure that I do
agree. Untestability is a very, very bad sign; but firstly,
it applies to whole theories as well as to propositions, and
secondly, testability isn't the only criterion for what's
science and what isn't, and some untestable propositions
might get in on their other "merits". For instance, "The
behaviour of electrons is well described by certain partial
differential equations" is probably too vague to refute even
if false, but I don't think that stops it being a scientific
statement.

Would you agree, further, that testability is not
necessarily an all-or-none affair? In other words, would
you agree that testability is concerned with confirmation
and disconfirmation, and that these come in degrees,
so that it makes sense to talk about the degree to which
a proposition is tested? For instance, in testing whether
a coin is fair, would finding that the coin landed heads
twenty times in a row more strongly disconfirm the coin's
fairness than finding that it landed only ten times in a
row? Yes, of course.

Okay, so we're agreed that science is about testable
propositions and that testability of these propositions
can come in degrees. Now, let me ask you this: Is testability
symmetric? In other words, if a proposition is testable,
is its negation also testable? Not entirely. It is more
important for a proposition to be refutable if false than
for it to be provable if true. (Of course, "refutable" really
means something like "able to be shown to be tremendously
improbable" and "provable" something like "able to be shown
to be tremendously unlikely to be wrong".) Negating a
proposition interchanges refutability and provability,
so it may change the extent to which a statement is testable.

AS a general rule, if a proposition is testable,
isn't its negation also testable? Can you help me to
understand how a proposition can be testable, but its
negation not be testable? To say that a proposition
is testable is to say that it can be placed in harm's
way of empirical data -- that it might be wrong
and that its wrongness may be confirmed through
empirical data, wouldn't you agree? Testability
means that the proposition can be put to a test and
if it fails the test, then it loses credibility and
its negation gains in credibility? Wouldn't you agree?

Doesn't it then follow that whenever a proposition
is testable, so is its negation, with a test for one
posing a test also for the other?

The explanation of what "testable" means is pretty good.
But it doesn't remotely follow from it that testability is
symmetrical, and I don't understand why Dembski thinks it
does.

Let me therefore ask you, are the following propositions
scientific and, as a consequence, testable? (1) Humans and
other primates share a common ancestor. (2) All organisms
on Earth share a common ancestor. (3) Life on Earth arose
by material causes. Are the negations of these propositions
therefore scientific and testable? If not, why not?
Of these: #1 is somewhat testable, and so is its negation.
#2 is somewhat testable, and so is its negation. In each of
these cases, it's difficult to establish conclusively that
two things do or don't share a common ancestor, which is
why I've said only "somewhat testable" for each. #3 is less
testable than either of those, and its negation if anything
even less so. I am not inclined to call either #3 or its
negation a scientific proposition.

Let's focus on the third of these propositions. How
is it tested? If its negation is not testable, how can the
original proposition be testable? Wouldn't it then simply
be like arithmetic -- simply a necessary truth and not
something in contact with empirical data? The third
proposition seems very difficult to test, to me. It's possible
to imagine circumstances in which (the usual understanding of)
it would be refuted -- for instance, say we encounter aliens
who claim to have put that first life on earth, having
designed it carefully themselves, and they kept very detailed
records that we can check. But most of the ways in which #3
could be false probably wouldn't lead to any way for us to
see that it's false. Its negation is also not very testable;
in fact, it seems just about entirely untestable. We could
come up with a very plausible natural history of the origin
of life and establish that it's compatible with everything
we know (or, at least, maybe we could), but that wouldn't
be anything close to proof that it actually happened that way.
So the negation of #3 is even more untestable than #3 itself,
and I'm even less inclined to consider it scientific. But
I don't see how either #3 or its negation is much like
arithmetic -- these aren't the sorts of things you can
plausibly claim to know a priori, they aren't truths of
pure logic, and they certainly aren't true by definition.

Let's now turn to evolution. Back in 1989 Richard Dawkins
remarked that those who don't hold to evolution are "ignorant,
stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)".
Is Dawkins right? Quite possibly. I seem to recall that he
pointed out that ignorance afflicts us all and that to be ignorant
of something is not necessarily cause for shame; I would certainly
want to point that out in connection with such statements.
I don't think I can comment any more definitely without knowing
more exactly what meaning of "evolution" is in play here;
different people use that word in very different ways.

Evolutionists distinguish between common descent (also
known as universal common ancestry) and the mechanism of
evolution. Common descent is a historical claim. It says
that all organisms trace their lineage back to a last universal
common ancestor (sometimes abbreviated LUCA). Do you hold to
common descent? Please be as detailed as you can in describing
the scientific evidence that leads you to that belief.
I suspect that if you go far enough back, the mechanisms of
reproduction and inheritance get a bit tangled up (as they
still are, to some extent, with viruses), and certain technical
difficulties may arise in talking about a "universal common
ancestor", and most especially in talking about a last
one. But I think the basic idea is very well supported. For
instance, look at the extent to which living things on earth
use the same mechanisms -- DNA and proteins, for two obvious
examples at a very low level. Other explanations are, of
course, possible: maybe there's some hitherto unobserved
mechanism by which features of one kind of life get copied
into another without common ancestry, or maybe someone or
something created lots of lineages separately but chose to
make them share all those features just as if they had common
ancestry, or something. Common descent seems like the simplest
explanation available, especially with the standard scientific
restriction of avoiding "non-naturalistic" explanations in
terms of ill-understood and unspecified entities like intelligent
designers.

Are you familiar with the work of Carl Woese and
Ford Doolittle? What is their view of the origin of life?
Is it monophyletic or polyphyletic? Do you accept their
conclusions? Why or why not? Would you agree that these
are reputable scientists? Doesn't their work throw into
question common descent? If not, why not? Do you accept
that there were multiple origins of life but that the multi-cellular
life that now exists traces its lineage back to a last
universal common ancestor?
I'm not familiar with their work, but let me just ask
Google... So, it looks like this is about the prevalence
of horizontal gene transfer among some simple living things,
and about the idea that early living things might have
emerged from a kind of gene soup. OK, maybe. This is just
the kind of thing I mentioned above about "if you go
far enough back"; it doesn't seem to me to throw into
question anything that matters. (If something like this
turns out to be right, then whether it amounts to "multiple
origins of life" might depend on how you define "life",
which is frankly neither interesting nor important.) In
Woese's and Doolittle's accounts, as I understand it,
we still have common ancestry, but maybe it goes back
to before there were things you'd want to call "organisms".

No doubt you have heard of the Cambrian explosion.
Isn't it the case that the fossil evidence suggests that
many of the animal phyla first appear over a period
of 5 to 10 million years in the Cambrian rocks without
evident precursors? Well, kinda. There's a period
of a few tens of millions of years during which early
representatives of many things-that-are-now-phyla are
first seen. They weren't as different then as their
descendants are now, of course, so talking about different
phyla can be misleading; and it seems pretty plausible
that what actually emerged "quickly" (over mere tens of
millions of years!) in the Cambrian was the "invention"
of hard, fossilizable body parts.

What multicellular precursors are there to the
Cambrian fauna? Why should we think that these are
ancestral to the Cambrian fauna? We may not have
found the ancestors of the known Cambrian fauna.
Various pre-Cambrian fossils are known, notably the
Ediacaran and Vendian ones. Are they ancestral to the
known Cambrian fauna? I don't know.

Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris
have both cast doubt on whether the Ediacaran
fauna are ancestral to the Cambrian fauna. Are you
familiar with their arguments? Do you share their
doubts? If not, why not?
I'm not familiar with their arguments, so let me
just go and ask Google again ... Well, I haven't had
much luck; I turned up some things that look very much
like both Gould and Morris saying (or at least assuming)
that the Ediacaran fauna are ancestral to the Cambrian.
So I can't comment on their alleged views to the
contrary.

Consider an octopus, a starfish, an insect,
and a fish. To what phyla do these belong? Is there
solid fossil evidence that these share a common
ancestor? If so, please provide the details.
Mollusca, Echinodermata, Arthropoda, Chordata,
respectively. Fossil evidence? I doubt it. The
evidence for common ancestry between phyla is
internal rather than external.

Do you regard the Cambrian explosion as providing
a challenge to common descent? If not, why not?
No; I can't see the least reason why I should.

I want next to turn to the mechanisms of evolution.
What are the mechanisms of evolution? Are these all of them?
There are lots, and probably some of them aren't known. There's descent
with modification, which in turn is a consequence of
several submechanisms: reproduction, sex, mutation,
crossover, and so on. There's natural selection, which
comes in various forms such as differential survival
and sexual selection. There's artificial selection, which
you could consider a special case of coevolution. You
might consider "neutral drift"
a mechanism, though I'm more inclined to call it a
consequence of what happens when you have variation
that isn't strongly acted on by selection. There are
some interesting processes like horizontal gene transfer
and (perhaps) whatever turned separate organisms into
organelles like mitochondria. These days there's even
genetic engineering. I'm sure I haven't listed all of
them; I doubt whether all of them are known.

So, you're not sure that these are all the mechanisms
that drive the process of biological evolution. Is intelligence
a mechanism? If you can't be sure that you've got all the
relevant mechanisms of evolution, how can you rule out
intelligence as a factor in biological evolution?
Intelligence isn't a mechanism of evolution;
it's the wrong kind of thing to be. But some things
that intelligent beings do (such as genetic engineering
and artificial selection) are mechanisms of evolution.
Artificial selection has had considerable impact on
the evolution of some kinds of organisms.

What, that isn't what you meant? Well, too bad you
didn't ask the right question.

Okay, you're convinced that the neo-Darwinian
mechanism of natural selection and random genetic
change is the most important factor in biological
evolution. Why is that? What is the evidence that
it deserves this place in evolutionary theorizing?
Please stop putting words into my mouth; I didn't say
what you claim I'm "convinced" of. However: The evidence
that this neo-Darwinian mechanism is a major factor
in biological evolution (the most important?
Who knows?) is that we know it happens, we can watch
it, it has big observable effects on timescales we can
observe, and it offers what seem like good prospects
of explaining a whole lot of things about life on earth.

Are you familiar with the bacterial flagellum, a miniature
bidirectional motor-driven propeller that moves certain
bacteria through their watery environments? Are you familiar
with the standard account told about its evolution, namely,
that a microsyringe embedded into this system eventually
evolved into it? Do you accept this explanation?
I know that there is such a thing as a flagellum, and
that if you're inclined to describe biological things
as if they were products of engineering then you might
call it a "miniature bidirectional motor-driven propeller".
I know that one conjecture about its origin is that it
is derived from a secretory system (which, if you're
inclined etc., you might describe as "a microsyringe").
That seems pretty plausible to me, but I'm not expert
enough in microbiology to claim that it's definitely
the right answer.

Would you agree that this microsyringe, known
as a type three secretory system (abbreviated TTSS),
is much simpler than the flagellum (requiring only
about 12 different proteins whereas a full flagellum
requires about 40 different proteins)? How then does
pointing to the TTSS as a precursor of the flagellum
explain it? How is this different from pointing to
a motor of a motorcycle and saying that the motor
evolved into the motorcycle? How does pointing to
the TTSS give us the "numerous successive slight
modifications" that Darwin described as necessary
in any evolutionary pathway?
Sure, the TTSS is simpler than the eubacterial flagellum.
It would have to be, to be any use in an
evolutionary explanation. Merely pointing to the TTSS
doesn't explain the evolution of flagella; as I understand it,
evolutionary biologists don't merely point and say "behold!".
In any case, consider the way in which the flagellum
entered anti-evolutionist discourse: as an example of
an "irreducibly complex" system. If it's true that
a TTSS is somewhat like a flagellum but much simpler,
but still useful, then the alleged irreducible complexity
of the flagellum is dead. That's the main point here.

Have you read the work of Milton Saier at UCSD?
Are you aware that Saier's work suggests that the TTSS
evolved from the flagellum rather than into it? Wouldn't
you agree that the challenge of evolution is to explain
how you get complex systems from simpler ones and not
vice versa? Thus, if Saier is right, wouldn't you agree
that to explain the TTSS as evolving from the flagellum
is only of limited evolutionary interest and that it
leaves untouched the evolution of the bacterial flagellum
in the first place?
I'm not familiar with Saier's work. Google to the rescue
again ... well, unfortunately it almost entirely turns up
ID proponents' webpages saying that Saier's
work has this consequence, but nothing useful from Saier
himself or explanations detailed enough for me to have
any chance of assessing how compelling the argument is.
So I can't comment on this, beyond saying two things.
Firstly, that if indeed the TTSS evolved from the
flagellum and not vice versa then their similarity is
not helpful in explaining how flagella came to be as they
are; secondly, that the existence of one person
who takes a particular view doesn't prove that view
correct.

Are you familiar with the writings of James Shapiro
(who is on faculty at the University of Chicago) and
Franklin Harold (who is an emeritus professor at
Colorado State University)? Shapiro is a molecular
biologist, Harold a cell biologist. They both claim
that there are no detailed Darwinian accounts for
the evolution of systems like the flagellum. Do you
agree with their assessment? Are there any other
evolutionary mechanisms that yield a detailed,
testable scenario for the origin of the bacterial
flagellum?
I am not familiar with their writings. Your claims
about their claims are too ambiguous to make any
useful reply to: what's meant by "detailed" or
"systems like", for instance? It wouldn't greatly
surprise me, though, to find that no one has so far
produced an account of how a eubacterial flagellum
might have evolved, with every step's details filled
in. Is that supposed to be a problem?

Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of
the neo-Darwinian synthesis, remarked toward the
end of his life that nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution. Do you accept
this statement? I think it was an exaggeration.

But isn't it the case that for systems like the
bacterial flagellum, evolutionary biology has no clue
how they came about? So was Dobzhansky wrong?
There are things for which we don't have a detailed
evolutionary explanation. That seems to me to be
entirely as we should expect even if present-day
evolutionary theory is right in every particular.
As I said above, I think Dobzhansky exaggerated; but
I don't see how the existence of things for which we
don't currently have an evolutionary explanation
would refute his statement, so that second question
appears to me to be a non sequitur.

Earlier you expressed reservation about ID
being testable. Do you also share such reservations
about the testability of evolutionary theory? No?
Could you explain how evolutionary theory is
testable? What sort of evidence would count against
evolutionary theory?
I expect some assertions about evolution that would
count as part of "evolutionary theory" aren't very
testable; see my remarks above about how testability
is an attribute of systems and of people, and not only
of individual propositions. However, I do think that
evolutionary theory is on the whole much more testable
than "intelligent design theory". Here are some
imaginable observations that would, for me, be strong
evidence against evolutionary theory as it stands
at present.

Very badly out-of-sequence fossils with no sign
of any means by which they could have got there
other than our ideas about what happened when
being disastrously wrong. Say, modern human
skeletons 400 million years ago.

A consistent failure of artificially applied
selection pressures to correlate with changes
in the population. Imagine that we found that
systematically killing rats with longer hair
led to longer and longer hair on the rats in
subsequent generations, etc.

Demonstrably Lamarckian inheritance in a wide
variety of organisms. (This would be likely to
lead to an augmentation rather than an
abandonment of evolutionary theory.)

Unambiguous evidence of gross intervention
by an intelligent agent. For instance, finding
the New Testament encoded into human DNA.

Dogs giving birth to monkeys, or something of
that sort.

The evolutionist J B S Haldane once remarked
that what would convince him that evolutionary theory
was wrong was finding a rabbit fossil in Precambrian
rocks. Would such a finding convince you that evolutionary
theory is wrong? And wrong in what sense? Would it show
that common descent is wrong? If such a fossil were found
in Precambrian rocks, why not simply explain it as an
evolutionary convergence?
If there were just a single finding, I'd probably think
hoaxing or previously unknown geological processes
a more likely explanation. But suppose there were
multiple discoveries by different teams without any
obvious axes to grind, always rabbits, always in the
Precambrian. I'd regard that as a good sign that
something was wrong with our present understanding,
and I'd be wondering whether everything we currently think
we know about evolution is rubbish somehow. Yes, it could
conceivably be some sort of convergent evolution, but
these rabbits would be the only organisms of
their kind in the Precambrian, and (in the scenario
I'm talking about, with multiple discoveries) it would
be very strange to find all these Precambrian rabbits
and no sign of their predecessors or successors. Yes,
a failure of common descent would be one thing to
consider in that situation.

Suppose we bracket the issue of common descent and
accept, for sake of argument, that all organisms trace
their lineage back to a last universal common ancestor.
In that case, why should we believe that natural selection
and random genetic change is the principal mechanism
driving biological evolution? Is that claim testable?
We should believe that, or at least something approximating
to it (see above, where I answered a similar question
already), because random genetic change and natural
selection are known to happen; because they are clearly
capable of explaining rather a lot of what we observe
about the nature of life on earth; and because no other
mechanism of similar explanatory power and consistent
with the evidence is known. ("Neutral drift" might be
another such mechanism; again, I've commented briefly
on it above.) Of course, it might turn out that there
are other natural mechanisms that we haven't found yet,
and we should be prepared to accept that if we find them.
And it might turn out that there are supernatural
mechanisms too, such as divine intervention; but they
are not something science can deal with, so when doing
science we should work on the assumption that such
mechanisms aren't operative.

Darwin in his Origin of Species
remarked that if it could be demonstrated that some
complex structure "could not possibly" have come
about "by numerous successive slight modifications"
then his theory would absolutely break down. But he
hastened to add that he could think of no such case.
But how is restricting evolutionary paths as
proceeding by "numerous successive slight modifications"
any restriction at all? How could the claim that some
system did not evolve by numerous successive slight
modifications ever be tested? Please describe in detail
how this possibility could be tested. If it cannot be
tested, then how can evolutionary theory be regarded
as scientific?
That's a curious question for an ID proponent to ask,
since "ID theory" purports to show that certain things
could not possibly have arisen by numerous successive
slight modifications, or at least could only have done
so by a succession of extremely low-probability events.
I would think it would be very difficult to demonstrate
that something couldn't have arisen in such a way.
That doesn't mean that evolutionary theory isn't
testable, it means that one imaginary way of testing it
isn't available. A more likely mode of falsification
would be showing that something didn't (rather
than couldn't) emerge by successive slight
modifications. There are others; see above.

Do you accept that there are other mechanisms
involved in biological evolution besides natural
selection and random genetic change? If so, how do
biologists known that the totality of these mechanisms
account for all of biological complexity and diversity?
Is the claim that these mechanisms account for all of
biological complexity and diversity itself testable?
Have you tested it? How so? How can it be tested?
If it should be tested and disconfirmed (as can always
happen to testable propositions), then what is the
alternative hypothesis that correspondingly is
confirmed? Wouldn't it have to be a design hypothesis?
If not, why not?
There are other such mechanisms, such as horizontal
gene transfer and artificial selection. Biologists
don't know, and generally don't pretend to know,
that all the mechanisms of evolutionary change are
known. The claim that they are is nether testable
nor scientific, which would be a problem if evolutionary
theory depended on its being scientific. But it doesn't.
(We also don't know that there are no fundamental forces
other than gravity, the electroweak force, and the strong
nuclear force. That doesn't stop physics as currently
practiced being scientific and testable, leaving aside
the usual doubts about string theory.) A testable
theory doesn't have to have a specific alternative
hypothesis; something could be testable but also be
the only coherent theory we have. An alternative to
orthodox evolutionary theory wouldn't have to be a
design hypothesis; for instance, some form of Lamarckism
might be such an alternative without "design" being
involved.

Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I don't seem to have
been tied in knots here. If Dembski's questions have
revealed contradictions in my thinking, I'm unable to
spot them; if they've shown me up as a bigot, an elitist
or a closet ID theorist, then again I'm apparently too
obtuse to see.

Well, what is Dembski claiming I should turn out
to be? He lists three kinds of "Darwinist", distinguished
oddly enough not by their opinions about evolution and
natural selection or even their opinions about ID,
but by their opinions about religion. (But, of course,
ID has nothing at all to do with religion;
whyever would anyone think it had?)

Of Dembski's descriptions, that of the "Kenneth Miller
Darwinist" is the nearest to describing me. So, I ought
to be revealed as a "closet ID theorist" by Dembski's
questions. It doesn't seem that way to me. Here, for
definiteness, are my opinions on ID; I don't think they
are the opinions of a closet ID theorist, and they seem
entirely consistent with my answers above. "Intelligent
design" is a slippery term, so I'll have to distinguish
between several different things it might mean.

It might mean "the idea that certain features
of life on earth are the way they are because an
intelligent being wanted them that way and made it
so". This could very well be true, and on the whole
I think it probably is. But my reasons for thinking so
are religious, not scientific, so they can't have
anything to do with ID which is, after all, not
a religious thing at all, dear me no.

It might mean "the idea that there's compelling
scientific evidence that certain features of life
on earth, etc.". If there is any such compelling
(or even strongly suggestive) scientific evidence
then I have not yet seen it, and in particular
the purported evidence offered by ID advocates
is hopelessly weak.

It might mean "the scientific theory that
permits us to identify where such design has
occurred". I do not believe that there is any
such theory at present, and in particular
Dembski's offering seems hopelessly muddled
to me: an exercise in deliberate obfuscation
masquerading as mathematics in the service of
science. Neither do I see any reason to expect
that there ever will be such a theory.

Dembski is much exercised about whether his victims
consider ID to be "science" or not, and about whether
they consider it to be "creationism" or not.

Is it science? It's hovering somewhere
near the border between non-science and really bad
science. When the question is "Could X have arisen
through the known evolutionary mechanisms?", what's
being done is generally science; unfortunately it's
extremely bad science, and the arguments presented
are woeful. When the question is "Does X in fact show
that Y arose by the action of an intelligent being?",
what's being done is generally not science. (And the
arguments presented are just as woeful as before.)

Is it creationism? No, it isn't. But it's
being done (almost exclusively) by creationists, and
just about everyone who finds "ID theory" credible
appear to do so because of their prior creationist
convictions. There are a few exceptions, which might
be a problem if I were claiming that ID simply is
a form of creationism; I'm not.

I would say the same thing, by the way, about much
of what's called "creation science". It isn't impossible
to believe (say) that the second law of thermodynamics
makes evolution impossible without being a creationist,
and probably there are some non-creationists who believe
just that. But the almost invariable motivation of those
who present such arguments is a desire to bolster creationism.
So it is with "intelligent design theory".

Although Dembski claims that ID is not fundamentally
about religion, it's interesting that

his characterization of "Darwinists" is all about
their religious opinions;

a lot of his questions are clearly aimed
getting opponents of ID to admit that they are atheists;

many more are clearly aimed at getting those who aren't
atheists to admit that they aren't atheists, which Dembski
takes as showing that they are really sympathetic to ID.

The real aim of the "Vise strategy" is not to "squeeze the
truth out of Darwinists"; it is to play to the jury and take
advantage of the fact that juries in US courts usually
consist mostly of Christians. So Dembski wants atheists
to be shown up as such, and he wants to give the impression
that to be anything other than an atheist is to be pro-ID.

It surprised me slightly how often Dembski's proposed
line of questioning assumes that the victim has answered
in particular ways, and how consistently he is wrong
when I'm the victim. I expect this is partly because he
really believes that all opponents of ID think in a
particular way, and partly because he wants to illustrate
the sorts of things you can do and isn't bothered by
the fact that his questions won't always be appropriate ...
but I also suspect that part of this is mere wish-fulfilment
fantasy: he likes to imagine having the poor idiot Darwinist
on the ropes. Ah, well.

More than once, Dembski uses the following line of
attack: (1) "Please list all the Xs you can
think of." (2) "Are you absolutely certain that that's
all of them?" (3) "If you aren't absolutely certain,
how can you be sure that there isn't an ID-ish X?"
This seems to me absolutely stupid.

More generally, again and again Dembski seems to confuse
lack of perfect knowledge with weakness of theory.
Do we know exactly how life began? No, so the idea
that it might have happened naturally is bogus.
Do we know exactly how bacterial flagella evolved?
No, so we might as well take them to have been
designed. Do we know exactly where the Cambrian
fauna came from? No, so probably they just sprang
out of nowhere. This may be a good debating tactic;
perhaps it plays well with a jury; but, again, it's
absolutely stupid.

Dembski consistently uses the term "materialism"
rather than "naturalism" when talking about, e.g.,
"methodological naturalism/materialism". I think
this is because he wants to portray naturalists (of
whichever sort) as bigoted rationalists, and "materialism"
sounds worse than "naturalism". But, unfortunately for
Dembski, "naturalism" is a much better term for the
position involved. I've used "naturalism" in my answers.

Dembski repeatedly tries to foist onto his victim
the idea that non-naturalist explanations are not only
unscientific but also necessarily wrong, and
he represents (orthodox) science as adopting naturalism
as an axiom and not merely a methodology. I can see that
he has tactical reasons for doing this, but it's rubbish.

Dembski more than once shows that he thinks he's
proved something useful if he gets his victim to admit
that there are imaginable future circumstances in which
something a bit like ID might be shown to be right.
For instance, if abandoning methodological naturalism
turned out to be more effective scientifically and ID
were somehow "developed into a full-fledged science".
(The implication being, of course, that what it is now
is at least a fledgeling science. Sorry, Bill, but it
ain't so.) It seems to me that this is entirely uninteresting;
These circumstances are hypothetical, and the question is
whether ID now is in any way scientific, not
whether something in the future that resembles ID as
chemistry resembles alchemy might be scientific.